Moon and Star
by aurorasprite15
Summary: When Moon Knight and Captain Marvel get together once a month for coffee, it's usually to keep each other up to date on how they are coping with their traumas and mental illnesses. Marc asks Carol for a favor. What could possibly be wrong with the Moon?
1. Part 1

Carol enters the diner in her civvies, and raps her knuckles on the counter three times. The owner, a black woman in her fifties, glances over and smiles at her, and gets her usual black coffee and a slice of pecan pie. She slides the plate down and says,

"Jake's not in yet, sweetie. He's runnin' late, as per usual."

Carol nods and sweeps her golden hair back over her shoulders before taking a sip of her coffee. Even though it is evening, she indulges in caffeine for this monthly meeting. Sometimes it goes on for a while, and while she may not technically need the energy, it sure does help.

Even though the owner called him Jake, Carol knows who she means. Moon Knight has many aliases, but his preferred one in this diner is Jake Lockley, night shift taxi cab driver. Carol understands the need for keeping civilians as divorced from the dangers of the superhero life as possible, but she also knows there's more to it for him.

As she thinks on this, Jake pushes the glass door of the diner open, his coat collar turned up against the evening cold. He removes his messenger cap to reveal close cropped reddish brown hair, and runs a hand through it to loosen the tight curls. Then he spots Carol at their usual spot on the end of the counter and saunters over.

"Sorry I'm late," he mutters. The owner, Gena, puts down a hot mug of coffee in front of him, then gasps.

"You look like hell, Jake!"

She isn't wrong. His handsome jaw has a gash across one side that has only just stopped bleeding, and a bruise is blossoming under one cheekbone. His eyes dart away from her as he responds.

"I know, I know. There was a mugger attacking a girl on 26th. I couldn't just watch it go down."

Carol gives him a look that says, Nice cover story. He grins.

"You can always count on a good samaritan here in NYC," Gena says and waves a dirty rag in the air. "I'll be out back if you need me."

"So what was it really?" Carol leans in towards Jake and lowers her voice. There are no patrons in Gena's Diner at this hour, but the conspiratorial nature of sharing a secret is a difficult habit to break.

He chuckles and shakes his head.

"These new gangsters just popped up, working for somebody they call 'Mad Dog.' Couldn't get much out of them, but I left 'em at the precinct. Let the boys in blue have a shot at changing things for the better for once."

"I wish that was an option with the Avengers," Carol sighs. "We're currently trying to prevent another war between Atlantis and Latveria. If I could just hand Namor over to the police, believe me, I would."

Marc stares down into his coffee. The lines of his face change, adjusting into a different kind of scowl. He is the Moon Knight again, despite the Lockley outfit.

"Listen, Carol. I need a favor." His flat affect is so sudden, it surprises her every time this change overcomes him.

"Whatever you need, Marc. That's what we said, right?"

"Because nobody else will. I remember," he says. His voice is more gravel, deeper than Jake's smooth tenor. There's a hint of paranoia in the way he slouches forward, and doesn't quite make eye contact with Danvers. He continues.

"There is something wrong with the moon," Marc says. He turns to Carol, looks her in the eyes. He is deadly serious. She knows how ridiculous it sounds, but pushes that thought away.

"Go on," Captain Marvel says, indulging the schizophrenic superhero.

"Two nights ago, I had a vision of Khonshu during one of Marlene's fundraisers."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Steven Grant's fiancée. The Vengeful God of the Moon tried to tell me something, but it's never been like this before. Everything was red." The words are tumbling from his lips so fast, Carol fears they may trip him up. She is nodding, but still waiting for what he's saying to make any kind of sense.

"Like a cloud of mist, seeping into everything. And he was behaving erratically. I don't know how to explain." He balls up his fists, puts them in his lap.

"I get it, Marc. Visions are hard to share with people who haven't seen them. Tell me what you want me to do."

"Can you go to the moon? Just, physically, check it and make sure there's nothing happening up there."

She taps a finger on her chin, and thinks about his request for a moment.

"I sure can. I'm going to get clearance when I get back, and I'll check it out ASAP. Here, " she says. She hands him a communications badge, one that Tony had made for each of the Avengers.

"If I don't contact you within 72 hours, tap my picture. I'll get a signal, and I'll come to you and give you a situation report. Just in case I get wrapped up in some other business, all right?"

"Fair enough." Moon Knight slides the card into his jacket pocket. He sighs and leans back, as though a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. The old crinkle of Jake Lockley's smile creeps back onto his face.

"Sorry it's been all business tonight, Danvers."

"No worries, Jake. Whatever you need." She finishes off her pecan pie, pays the bill, and stands up from the counter. She puts a hand on his shoulder, to reassure him, and gives it a pat before she heads back out into the dim, orange New York night.

Carol slides her motorcycle helmet on and thinks back. These meetings are supposed to be a give and take, but sometimes one of them needs more support than the other. Tonight, he needed her help. She would probably be able to deal with Tony's foolish insults on her own, but it would have helped if she could vent to someone.

Another night, perhaps. She lets the vibrations of her motorcycle and the rush of the wind carry away her worries, and lives in the thrill of the moment.

Whatever you need, because nobody else will believe us.


	2. Part 2

The moon shaped throwing knife flies from Moon Knight's hand with practiced ease. It embeds in the drug dealer's shoulder to the bone, slicing through the flesh with no effort. The man gasps with pain and clutches at the wound. He turns toward the dark alley behind him.

"Who's there!?"

"Look up." Moon Knight glowers on a fire escape above him, his white cloak billowing in the wind. This man is particularly oblivious. Annoying.

The man below reaches into his waistband, but he can't react before Moon Knight falls upon him, billy clubs in hand. His knees nail the dealer in the chest and he pins him to the ground, arms to either side of his face.

"Where's Mad Dog's hideout?" Marc's breath is sour from whiskey and coffee, and he smells it inside his mask. He leans in closer to he terrified man beneath him. If he's scared enough, he'll talk. They always do.

Except they haven't been talking, lately. Khonshu's voice reverberates invisibly in his head, and without looking, Marc knows he is standing behind him in that crisp, white, tailored suit, straightening the tie below his floating bird skull. Spector clenches his teeth against the projection. He has to stay focused on the mission.

The man is babbling nonsense. Moon Knight takes a club and crushes his right hand against the pavement. His scream cuts the dim night, but no windows open to investigate. This is the bad part of Hell's Kitchen, after all.

"I won't ask again."

He's not going to answer. He fears something more than you. The God of Vengeance is disappointed in his avatar on Earth, and makes that sentiment plain, the disdain dripping from each sentence.

Spector bellows up at the sky, wheels a club back. He's going to knock the man unconscious, but he sees on top of the opposite building a red shape. He falters for a moment; just long enough for a wooden bolt to plant in the drug dealer's eye. Then the person cloaked in red is gone.

Interesting. Khonshu gnaws at the edges of his thoughts. You should go after her.

Marc stands up, and the red mist coils up around him, engulfs his eyesight and tinges everything he sees. He whirls on the God who tore him from Death's embrace and gave him a new purpose in life.

His God is no longer cleanly white. A pall of red stains across his suit, and the outline of him blurs. Blood drips from his gloved hands, his beak. The voice in his head booms, now shrill and harsh.

Are you questioning me, AVATAR?

"What is happening to you?"

Nothing has happened. Nothing is changed. You are my essence on this Earth. You answer to me.

The manifestation of Khonshu begins to grow in size, and Moon Knight takes several steps back in surprise. Waves of anger boil off his God, and he fears retaliation for yet another failure under his watchful eye. He drops to one knee.

"Please! Don't! I've only ever served you. I am your Fist, I inspire fear in those who prey on travellers in the dark!"

How can you inspire terror when you are plagued by it yourself?

Khonshu crouches down into the alley. A massive gloved hand reaches past Moon Knight. It caresses his masked face with a bloody knuckle, then continues toward the corpse on the ground.

I will show you what fear is. Now go. Follow the woman.

Marc clutches his head against a massive spike of pain. When he opens his eyes again, only a few traces of blood darken the asphalt where the man's body had been.

"I will not fear," he mutters. Marc straightens his mask, finds no blood on it from the encounters, real or imagined. He ascends the fire escape in moments, and peers across the rooftops in search of any sign of scarlet.

The Moon silently lights his path.


	3. Part 3

Carol flies through the stratosphere. The air burns off her body into fiery plumes of glowing energy, each molecule's glowing friction stored in her energy reserves for a future fight. It's giddying, being this high up, and no longer needing an aircraft for orbital space travel. Her helmet encloses her face at this altitude by necessity, so she can no longer feel the tingle of energy breezing along her cheeks. There is no distraction from the fury that reddens her face.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" Tony had said. He hadn't even looked away from the holographic diagrams he was manipulating. Avengers Tower was mostly empty that morning, and Iron Man was hosting a vidconference with Maria Hill of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Natasha Romanov. The two on the screen had averted their eyes. Carol and Tony had bad blood, and the two women didn't want to enable any more fighting.

"If you're talking about the Latverian insurrection, you seem to have that pretty well under control," Carol had replied.

"Fine, come and go as you please. You already do," Stark had said. "It's just that -"  
He waved a glowing hand through the air, captured some data, and threw it onto one of the projector displays to visualize. It was satellite feeds of the Moon, including the Blue Area, and various lifesign analytics. Not much was stirring. The ruined cityscape crumbled in silence in the static-gray filter of the feed.

"-it seems like a waste of time. That's all." Tony looked over his shoulder at her and shrugged.

"Because everything that isn't important to you is a waste of time," Carol said. Her hand balled into a fist as she spoke.

"Uh, guys?" Hill tried to interrupt.

"If you want to indulge in a little light psychosis, who am I to judge?"

"Tony-" Carol's voice hardened from annoyance to anger.

"There's nothing there!" He turned on her, finally, pointing at the livestream from the satellite. "Mission over! Now can we please regroup on extracting Hawkeye and Cap from the Doombot manufacturing lab?" His eyes had dark circles beneath them, and his black hair was greasy and disheveled. He'd been tactically operating this mission for at least three days.

"This seems like more of a diplomacy problem than an Avengers problem, no offense," Captain Marvel said. "I'm sure cool, collected Tony Stark can handle anything Victor Von Doom decides to throw at him."

"Sure, walk away," he had called after her. "I'll be glad to have you out of my hair."

The last thing he said to her as she left Avengers Tower reverberates in her mind as her feet touch down on the dusty white rock in Earth's orbit. Her suit acknowledges the presence of an atmosphere here in the Blue Area with a series of tinny beeps, and releases the pressure lock on her helmet.

The ruins are completely still. Nothing has moved around here in ages. She moves among the empty, crumbling alien structures in leaps and bounds, and the light silty moon dust trails behind her. She does not notice a small metal box, partially buried in the dirt, as she springs past it; nor does she see the trace of red particles that spiral out from a tiny crumpled crack in its side, sparse and small, that quietly integrate within her palpable energy aura.

Carol ascends the stairs to the Watcher's citadel in two gigantic bounds.

He sits in his control room before a hundred, hundred monitor screens, each showing a different crisis on Earth. His massive head does not turn to acknowledge her entering his control room, as she approaches him from behind.

Carol scans the monitors quickly, sees Steve and Clint outrunning an explosion. Doombot parts rain from the sky. Guess they did have everything under control. The panels then fill with one image on repeat: Carol standing behind the Watcher's chair, arms folded across her chest.

She adjusts her stance, in the awkward shuffle of one who has been caught with their hand in a cookie jar, and her projections copy her movement in real time.

"I didn't mean to interrupt. Haven't had a chance to visit the moon before, so. Yeah," Captain Marvel says. She clears her throat and quiets her nerves.

The Watcher's head turns a fraction towards her. New images begin to plaster across the screen: images from Carol's past. There, the fight with Rogue. Above that, a standoff with Iron Man. On a juxtaposed panel, there she was holding hands with Marcus. Her gut twists in recognition, and she forces her gaze away from the screens, hands balled into fists.

"I know why you're here." His voice is softer than she expected.

"I thought you might. You know better than I do, at least," she says.

"I cannot interfere," he says. One of the old memories on the screens starts filling in random blotches, blowing up to form one huge image. She was Ms. Marvel, there, confronting the Skrull Mar-Vell. He had lied so convincingly to everyone. It stings even now to think about him.

She turns to walk back down the hallway, back to the surface of the Moon. Back to a seemingly hopeless task, just to reassure a friend that everything is normal. To prove to a single somebody that she isn't a bully, or a monster.

"Good luck, Ms. Marvel," the Watcher says. His voice echoes around her, and a door in the hallway slides open at her approach. He closes his eyes as she crosses the threshhold. When he opens them, his monitors are scattered across all of the events on Earth once more, save a small screen embedded on the desktop. He waves a hand over it, and it zooms in on Carol's footfalls, and even further, on the trail of red motes she is leaving in her wake.

The room has gray walls, with tiny lights along the periphery of the ceiling. Captain Marvel activates her cowl manually, and enables the adaptive-light enhancement technology. This room, though dustless, appears to have been untouched for ages. Objects of unknown origin and purpose lay scattered on tables, in various states of repair. This was some kind of technological laboratory, then, or perhaps even an armory.

She identifies one or two pieces of possible Kree origin. When she sees what she came here for, she knows. It is written across her face, the wonder and joy, and tremulous hope. These were made for Captain Marvel, after all.

She slides the Nega-Bands over her gloved hands, and the raw power they contain surges into her, melding with her energy wellspring and invigorating her. She feels limitless, and she floats above the ground for a moment, before she gains full awareness of her new, enhanced powers.

Carol kicks off the stairs of the Watcher's citadel and launches herself into celestial orbit as fast as she can, testing new limits. She lets out a scream of happiness, because she is fired up on an adrenaline high the likes of which she hasn't experienced since she first went Binary.

She observes the moon from a high orbit, one last time, before she decides to stop investigating. There's nothing going on up here. Marc Spector can rest easy once she reports back.

Carol soars away toward Earth, and Manhattan. Her brilliant yellow energy streak illuminates hundreds of empty buildings from the lost civilization that constructed the Blue Area. In one particular house, the window illuminates, and briefly, the floor of the ancient room. In the dust lies the corpse of a man, freshly bloodied, with a crossbow bolt embedded in his head.


	4. Part 4

Stephen Grant rolls out of his silk sheets with a soft groan. He lumbers across his gigantic master bedroom towards an elegant side table, dressed only in his boxer-briefs. He carefully selects a glass tumbler, pours a measure of amber liquid, and swallows it with disinterest. The bathroom door is closed, shower running, and the scent of Marlene's favorite soap permeates the room alongside the subtle moisture of the steam below the door.

His headache dulls to a more manageable level, as do the aches and cuts of a long evening patrolling the shadowy alleys of New York City. He checks the bridge of his nose. It feels broken, again.

Marlene emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. She runs a perfect, small hand through her strawberry blonde hair to disentangle the wet strands. Stephen can hardly believe his luck in landing her. He wraps his arms around her waist, and she responds by placing her hands on his head and turning it to examine his injuries.

"Don't I even get a 'good morning, sweetheart,' before you start in on your nurse routine?" he asks. A smile quirks the corners of his mouth.

"Tch," she says. She places a finger over his mouth for emphasis. She's looking at his jaw. "That cut needs stitches right away." She has several first aid kits stashed all over the mansion, and pulls one out from their nightstand to treat his wounds. Taut silence stretches between them as she works.

"How is the art installation coming?" he says.

"Pretty well, all things considered. I've got the construction team mounting reflective lenses all along the skylight to simulate the passage of the Moon's beam through the crystal. They should be done by tonight." She's talking about her late father's staff, the one he used to locate the temple of Khonshu. It makes him uncomfortable. She is talking to him as if he were Marc, but he's trying to be better than he was. Is.

When she finishes, Marlene gets off the bed, but as she moves towards the armoire, Stephen catches her wrist.

"Forget the past. Let's live in the moment, hm?" She turns her blue-gray eyes on him, and he tugs the corner of her towel. It slides off easily, and reveals her small breasts. He grins like a mischevious devil.

She laughs.

"Oh, Stephen!" she cries as he hauls her back onto the king-size bed, with greater mischief on his mind.

Marlene leaves for the art gallery, to attend to her ordinary business, dealing with mundane tasks, which will culminate in an impressive, but normal, opening reception. Stephen watches her leave from the bay window of his parlor. He swirls coffee in his mug and cannot help his thoughts drifting to Carol. She has not called on him, like she said she would, but it is still early. One more night. She won't have forgotten.

He hates how easy it is to leave the life of Stephen Grant behind. As though it were a thin film coating his real identity. He's always Marc Spector, below the surface, and Moon Knight belies it all.

There is another layer of self-hatred in the failure of last night. Moon Knight never caught the woman in red. She had too much of a head start on him, and he knew how easy it was to disappear on those rooftops. He would try again tonight, for certain. She was likely one of Mad-Dog's enforcers.

He turns on his heel and walks back to the kitchen to locate his cell phone. He'll call his financial adviser, and have him donate several million dollars to an anti-drug charity. Seeing Stephen Grant do noble things with Marc Spector's blood money would cheer him up.

He opens the door to his kitchen, but instead it reveals a black, empty room. A single point of red light emanates in the distance.

Marc sets down his coffee.

He straightens his collar.

He enters the room.

This is not the first time Marc Spector has encountered a vision, a hallucination. He is, unfortunately, becoming used to them. As he traverses the distance to the pinpoint of red, he is aware of his mind shedding the mantle of Stephen Grant, the man he wants to be, revealing his truest self. The ancient white cloak, the armored suit, and the extraordinary array of weapons. He arrives at his destination as his ideal, primal self. The man who escaped death, but at what cost?

A woman kneels at a prayer bench. She is dressed in a nun's habit, excepting the color, a deep red. The veil lies at her side, discarded, her auburn hair wound into a bun, with strands hanging over her face. The light is coming from a red votive candle, floating in the darkness before her. She whispers in Latin.

Moon Knight stands beside her, gets a look at her face, her outfit, her silhouette. This is the one that got away. Why does his psyche tease him so?

She stops praying. Leans back on her heels. She turns her head in his direction, but speaks as if to herself.

"I cannot let him take my son. That monster in white."

She looks at his face, his cowl. Through him again.

"Forgive me breaking my vows, Lord. I can't let him kill my boy."

At this quaver in her voice, Moon Knight leans down to touch her shoulder.

"I would never hurt an innocent child," he says. When he brushes against her, she pulls away, scrambling as though she saw a ghost.

"You are here!?" she cries out. She cannot see him, but she can feel his presence and hear his voice. Perhaps this is more than a simple vision. He steps back, not wanting to scare her.

Instead, though, her hands ball at her sides and she squares herself in the rough direction she last sensed him. There is pure hatred in her eyes.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself. My name is Scarlet Fasinera. My son is Joseph. You call him Mad Dog."

She pauses, likely gathering her thoughts.

"You are a murderer."

"So is your son."

"I love him still. And I know who you love, too, Moon Knight. How shall you protect them from me?" Her statement is matter-of-fact, to the point of absurdity. She can shoot, yes, but what else?

Her fist strikes the air just before his already broken nose. He flinches backwards, despite not knowing if this strange connection would allow her to cause harm. She smiles, mirthless.

"What shall you do when the tables are turned?" She steps forward into an advanced judo stance. She holds her arms up between them, and their eyes lock. She can finally see him. And Moon Knight can see the stained-glass window behind her: jagged forms and striations of red form a massive, chaotic spiral. He postures defensively, too, but his eyes are trapped following the impossible shapes that dizzy and defy comprehension.

Something about their dream-state shivers. Their connection wavers, then snaps. Stephen Grant is standing in his kitchen, squaring off against his refrigerator. He relaxes to stand normally, and heaves a sigh. This person, Scarlet, is going to be major trouble.

He'll have to be ready to protect Marlene at the reception tonight, whatever the cost.


	5. Part 5

Captain Marvel streams with fire when she enters the atmosphere. The lights in New York City at night are just becoming distinctive pips instead of an indeterminate mass of flickering color, when her heads-up display emits a familiar chirp. Reed Richards, distress call, intermediate threat level 3.

Carol can just identify the shape of Stephen Grant's mansion on the magnified screen, and weighs the importance of informing her friend over answering the request. She calculates that he likely isn't home from a night on patrol yet; she can call on him in the morning. She adjusts course, and scours the horizon for the familiar shape of the skyscraper the Fantastic Four calls home.

"I just got your distress call."

"Thank heavens, Carol! You're just the person I needed to see," Reed Richards yells over the cacophony in his laboratory at the Baxter Building.

His arms are stretched all over the lab, which takes up the entirety of this floor. He pushes flashing buttons at several terminals with warning sirens blaring. All the circular gauges mounted in a huge terminal on the edge of the room point somewhere beyond the red critical zone. A portal in the center of the room glows with bright yellow light, and it frequently spits bolts of static and lightning, arcing to various metallic consoles and anchor points. Wind blows in a cyclone around the edges of the room.

Carol ducks under a flying stapler.

"How can I help?" she bellows.

"Take this communicator-" he holds up a noodly arm in front of her "-and go through the portal. Johnny can fill you in from there. Hurry!"

She grabs the earpiece and makes her way across the room. Captain Marvel holds her arms up to shield her face. She squints as she presses through a semipermeable barrier of light. When she opens her eyes, she recognizes the building she has entered instantly. This is the prison Reed and Tony built in the Negative Zone. They call it Prison Alpha.

It's falling apart.

Carol overrides her cowl so she can equip the earpiece. For the moment or two that she breathes the air in this room, she smells the shocking difference in atmospheric composition: ozone and rotten fruit. Then the cowl is up again, and she calls out.

"Johnny Storm, this is Captain Marvel. Reed asked me to help."

"Nice to hear from you, Cap! You just come through?" His voice is tinny and static whines through the audio. "Come up to the roof, I'll fill you in, in person."

"Roger that." She navigates the crumbling halls with ease. Carol has visited a few times on what the Avengers call "prison patrol." It had been Ant-Man's idea that they each familiarize themselves with the imprisoned population of all the secured facilities, at least once a month, to keep apprised of who was where and exactly what the consequences of a prison break would be. Carol always appreciated valuable threat assessment information.

The building itself hadn't been falling apart last time she visited, though. It had been in perfect condition, even if it was on the uglier side. The prison was a squat, rectangular building, with walls that were concrete lined with lead. Feet thick cement barriers, with no windows. This building was designed to be inescapable, for only the most dangerous, highly powered supervillains. One way in, one way out, and the door closed ninety-five percent of the time.

The fluorescent light flickers above her head; a pall of dust falls at her feet. Carol climbs the metal stairs to the rooftop access and pushes the heavy door, revealing the open atmosphere of the Negative Zone. She's never seen the outside of the prison, before.

An orange-yellow haze spreads uniform across the horizon line. Swirls of brighter yellow clouds bloom through the fog bank and burst over the craggy, bleached expanse of dry earth, spattering the ground with viscous yellow ooze that sits, hydrophobic, on the surface, never absorbing into the wasted land beneath it.

A thin energy barrier enshrouds the prison in a protective dome. The strange liquids and fogs remain held at bay, but something else is definitely eating away at Reed Richards' scrupulously designed habitat. Carol approaches a young man in a blue suit; he is leaning over the edge of the roof, peering at something in the distance.

"Heya Cap," he chirps at her approach. Johnny Storm turns to face her, and smiles.

She claps him on the shoulder. "What's the word, fireball?"

"Not good, I'm sorry to say," he says. "Ben and Sue are out there trying to repair some power conduits that blew out." He sticks his thumb out and points behind him.

"Is that causing energy fluctuations in the barrier?"

"Yep. Got some major structural damage on Alpha before we could get into damage control mode."

He twirls his finger in the air.

"Time moves faster on this side." Carol nods.

"That's not the only thing that's busted, though. Reed says there's some kind of short in an anti-matter conjunction cell array thing that's on the other side of the barrier." He shrugs.

"I dunno what any of that means, but he said someone with energy beams would be able to jump-start it."

"Isn't it dangerous on the other side of that barrier?" Carol says.

"A little. But see, I can't go, because that barrier flickers out of existence every fifteen minutes or so, and if you look over there-" he points behind her "-that's an advance scouting party of the Annihilation Wave. I gotta provide covering fire for the team while they work."

Huge insect-like beings scramble on the ground, and several hum and buzz in the air on massive, transparent wings. They have pincers and stingers, and are the same shade of brown as the soil below. It makes them difficult to see and count, but Carol trusts Johnny. When he says Annihilation Wave, he means it.

The group communicator clicks to life. A woman's voice.

"Barrier collapse ETA one minute, Johnny."

A rough, deep rasp replies. "Don't you go slackin' off on me now, kid."

Johnny Storm begins to glow with a burning aura. He smiles and answers, "Please. I'm just getting started, Old Ben."

The Human Torch jets off into the sky, and casually remarks to Captain Marvel, "Oh yeah, you should probably get ready, too. The barrier is only disabled for a couple seconds, and it hurts a lot more to travel through it when it's up."

Carol pulses with energy and spirals around the trail of fire Johnny leaves behind him. She outpaces him easily, and smirks at his obvious shock.

"What's the matter, flyboy? Ever seen an Avenger at work?" She says.

They laugh and race around the interior of the dome, five thousand feet across, in a matter of seconds, before he gestures at one side of the bubble, and heads toward the other wall, nearest the oncoming space-bug apocalypse.

"You can't miss the array thing, I promise." His voice crackles on the commline. "Just shoot it with your Kree-whatever beams."

Carol rolls her eyes. Johnny gets more sarcastic the more nervous he is. He bubbles over with energy, where she keeps her nerves contained.

The thin barrier falters and goes out. Captain Marvel flies past it in a straight line, as fast as she can go. The heads-up display on her cowl uses Kree technology to search for noteworthy objects on the ground as she travels. She takes a moment to manually disable several overlays; the antimatter inversion that takes place at the doorway into Negative Zone introduces anomalous readouts on the personal life-sign monitors and atmospheric regulation protocols.

The ground drops away and becomes a sheer cliff face that crumbles into nothingness. It's disorienting to see that hazy yellow fog appear below, and she pauses in the air, hovering, and searches the canyon lip. A sensor chimes at her, and directs her attention to the highlighted object. She flies in for a closer look.

"Why is the array embedded in the wall of a cliff, Storm?" she asks over the communications line.

"Don't ask me, I didn't build it!" he says. He must be fighting the swarm, now, because he sounds breathless. Wonder how long they've been at this, Carol thinks.

The machine in the wall looks like a combination of a windmill and a power-saw, surrounded by paper-thin solar panel tiles that reflect inwards toward a dull, grayish cube. In the distance, she sees a flash of blue light. The dome of energy must have knit itself back together. She was going to be stuck out here for a little while, now.

"I guess that's the...whatever," she mutters to herself. Energy starts coalescing around her fists from her energy reserves. Sweat beds on her brow, and she grits her teeth as she takes aim at the tiny cube.

Captain Marvel fires two beams of radiant energy that, combined, hits with the power of a fusion bomb. If the target were anything but a glorified battery, it would be reduced to ash within moments. Instead, the box glows, the same brilliant yellow of Carol's energy. The light refracts off the furling solar panel array, condensing the light infusion, and the core becomes a much brighter white.

She pushes herself to maintain the energy flow as long as she can. The more she fuels it, the more likely it will maintain itself as the perpetual motion engine that it was intended to be, and the longer it will charge the energy shield around the interdimensional prison complex. Her newly acquired Nega-Bands replenish her energy at almost the same rate she expends it, and she pushes her output higher, hoping with a final surge of energy, the strange mechanism will finally begin to move from its own power.

A bearing groans, and shakes loose accumulated dust. Another gear starts turning, twisting along the shaft. A rock is flung from inside a junction point, and the bits begin to move faster. Carol stops pouring energy at the thing, and the box cools to an orange state, then pulses white, with a thrumming noise from the machine assembly.

"Reed should probably put an outer case on this. It looks like he built it in the '60s," Captain Marvel says to herself. She stays a moment longer to make sure the whole contraption isn't going to shake itself out of the side of the canyon and fall into oblivion. Satisfied, she looks up, prepared to fly back to the dome, and the prison, and the exit from this malodorous plane of existence.

She looks up, and sees Annihilus.

"What-" is all she has time to say, before it is upon her, in a flurry of emerald bat wings and green armored carapace. It punches the side of her head with a clawed hand and a metallic screech from its maw. The hit doesn't hurt as much as she expected it to, but Carol feels the communicator disintegrate inside her ear.

Her arms are up, and she fights back, matching blow for blow.

*I THOUGHT I COULD SMELL YOU AGAIN* shrieks the monstrous robot-bat-mummy-insect between strikes.

Captain Marvel doesn't respond. She barely has time to think between reactions to the pummeling. It catches her fist, and she channels energy into it, screaming with the effort. The thing smiles wide, and a centipede wriggles between its long, sharp fangs. Its grip tightens and smothers the burgeoning ray.

*NICE TRY I CAN DO THAT TOO* it laughs, like a blender full of glass, and pushes her away. Annihilus positions its hands together, and generates a glowing yellow orb polluted with sunspots between the palms. The same energy pours from its eyes and intermingles with the concentrated glow. A narrow beam arcs between its lethal claws and hits Danvers squarely in the stomach.

It pierces clean through.

Captain Marvel's body wracks with pain, and a swell of blood trickles from the corner of her mouth when she coughs. She recalls from distant, cloudy memory that she had turned off all lifesign monitors, which would have indicated when he first arrived, and would likely be screaming at her that she was dying now.

Annihilus grabs her by the face while she is stunned and hisses with pleasure.

*I WONDER HOW LONG YOU WILL TAKE TO DIE* it screams. Carol's ears are thudding with her heartbeat. She thinks it can only speak in screams. Warmth slowly spreads through her midsection.

Captain Marvel holds her fists right in front of its face, while it laughs, triumphant. She bellows with fury and pure energy radiates from her entire body, arcs along her mohawk and funnels into her fists, which she pulses in his face, directly down its throat.

Annihilus chokes and spits, and releases her from its grip. Its yellow spittle flecks across her arms. She does not give it time to recover from the underhanded attack. Red gauntlets fly into its metallic cranium and carapaced torso, each blow punctuated by pulsing, fusion fire, and a warcry from the Avenger's snarling mouth.

It does recover, though, faster than she anticipates. It catches her arms and flares its massive wings. Her guard opened, it lands a clawed foot on her face and spins them both around in the air, disorienting her, and launching her backwards into the cliffside.

There are so many cuts on her face, Carol can't see when she opens her eyes for all the blood. She blinks rapidly and clears her vision, in time to see what looks like the end of the world.

Annihilus hovers above her, poised like a king. Its belly scales have flipped, turning its underside a burnished metallic purple. Behind it, hordes and hordes of insects twice the size of a man fill the sky in a dizzying formation; all of them are trembling with anticipation, ready to enact the will of the Living Death that Walks.

The orange crystalline rod that sits at Annihilus's throat sparks with light for a moment. The master of the Negative Zone floats down in front of the defeated Avenger with arms crossed over his chest.

*TALK NOW OLD FRIEND* screams the monster. *HOW DO YOU PLAN TO BETRAY ME THIS TIME*

Captain Marvel stares in bewilderment. She tries to remove herself from the wall, but her struggle is cut off by a green claw at her neck. Her pulse beats against the sharp point and draws a bead of blood. She stops moving.

Tiny particles of red light coalesce from Carol's weakening yellow aura into a glowing spot before her chest. Several tense moments of silence follow, as the monster stares intently into the red orb, as if in communication. Then the impossible bug-king starts laughing maniacally and curls its claws in hideous glee.

*THIS IS A GOOD IDEA* its voice rattles.

*WE WILL DESTROY YOUR WORLD TOGETHER*

The red light dissipates. Metallic claws embed in the wall on either side of Carol's head, and it leans in, clicking and hissing, to level its glowing, empty eyes with her cowled gaze. The innumerable horde of insects crowds around the pair on the cliff face, and the droning buzz of their wings reverberates in Captain Marvel's chest, and thrums in her head. She is barely conscious when Annihilus rears back and slams its cranium into hers.

Her last thought is of Marc Spector.


	6. Interlude

Johnny Storm burns the last of the massive insects with a jet of flame from his hands. It dissolves into ashes with a horrendous shriek, and its remains blow away when a surge of energy races across the barrier.

"We're stabilizing," Sue calls across the communicator.

"Finally," says Ben. "We've been at this for hours."

"Good thing Cap came along when she did," says Johnny. He knows she hates when he calls her that.

No response.

"Carol, you there?" Johnny asks. He flies up to the edge of the barrier and peers in the direction she flew. The yellow fog is so thick he can't see anything but swirling, roiling wisps of deadly mist.

"Hey Sue, bubble me through."

"You make it sound so easy," she says.

"Pretty please," says the Human Torch.

Sue Storm creates a protective forcefield around Johnny, and floats him through the energy barrier that now safely encloses Prison Alpha. She pops the bubble, and he soars over the dry soil, and through the fog. Hopefully, towards Carol.

The yellow droplets in the fog burn in his fiery aura and dissipate away as long as he keeps moving, but he knows from experience the liquid is acidic, and will melt through his skin to the bone if he's not careful. The fog falls off and disappears into a deep crevice. Johnny amplifies his fire aura, consuming himself in a vortex strong enough to burn away all traces of the dangerous mists on his spots the array on the wall when its panels catch his flickering glow.

Johnny sees a crater near the panel in the wall, but no sign of the missing Avenger. Then he hears distant buzzing, and whips around in the air. Anxiety piques his stomach. What if there was another scouting party?

A massive ball of stinging insectoids swarms in a tight ball around something. His fears confirmed, Johnny flies for it in reckless fury and burns away a swath of them with his contrails as he jets past. Corpses fall away from the group, revealing a limp human shape in red and blue.

He does not have time to kill this entire swarm; he has to get Carol to safety, now. He doubles back around and burns hot and bright. The Human Torch barrels into the center of the squirming mass like a cannonball. He emerges from the other side with Captain Marvel cradled in his arms.

Johnny is on the communicator as he flies.

"Sue, open the barrier for us. Ben, go back across and tell Reed we've got wounded incoming."

Reed, Ben, and Johnny are arguing in the waiting room of the SHIELD specialized trauma center. Sue sits in the corner under the muted television, head in her hands. Nobody has slept for at least two days.

"I'm telling you, it's scientifically impossible. None of the insects have a strong enough sting to pierce her skin, let alone-"

"And yet, here we are. No equation's gonna help now, Reed."

"Why'd you let her go out there alone? Where were you?"

All three, arguing in circles, like stubborn children. Each of them is desperate to avoid the consequences of what they've wrought, each one just as responsible, and all feeling the same monumental burden of guilt.

They are too busy to notice when Sue vanishes from her seat. She stealthily navigates the halls of the hospital wing and approaches the surgeon's suite. The observation room is not empty. Black Widow, Maria Hill, and Ant-Man wait tensely for signs of improvement. Sue reappears in front of the glass window and presses her hands against it. Hank Pym is the only one who startles at her invisibility act.

"How much longer?" she asks the room.

"They're almost done with sutures. Forty-five minutes at most," Natasha responds. She's seen a few surgeries in her lifetime, but not many on the most resilient heroes, so her answer is a hopeful estimate.

Sue turns to the group as though she sees them for the first time. Her eyes stop on each of their faces, tracing their concern and memorializing their shared pain. She is so very tired, yet her face remains dry. Carol wouldn't want anybody crying over her.

Sue looks at the floor and asks the question on everyone's mind. Her voice is quiet and resigned, as though she knows the answer already, but cannot bear to let the issue go unspoken. They may be angry with one another, but Captain Marvel is still an Avenger.

"Where's Tony?"


End file.
